One can assume that former Attorney General John Ashcroft didn’t mean it to be funny, but his testimony on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee might strike one as hilarious, were it not for the issue at hand — torture.

Ashcroft is the Attorney General who approved torture before he disapproved it, but committee members spared him accusations of flip-flopping.

He explained that he initially blessed the infamous torture memoranda drafted by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and others in mid-2002 because he (Ashcroft) believed it imperative to afford the President “the benefit of genuine doubt” regarding how to protect American lives in the “war on terror.”

But Ashcroft added that, despite this, when concerns about that earlier guidance for interrogations were brought to his attention, changing his mind “was not a hard decision for me.” A very flexible Attorney General.

For decades the federal government has been developing a highly classified plan that would override the Constitution in the event of a terrorist attack. Is it also compiling a secret enemies list of citizens who could face detention under martial law?

By Christopher Ketcham

05/05/08 "Radar Magazine" -- - 28/04/08 --- -In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present.

“Well the information which has been public for many months is that the attorney general decided not to fly commercially based on some assessments of existing threat level”- Hillary Clinton, June 8 2002

"How dare" Bill dismiss the idea of a new investigation based on his wife's own statements! If this "threat level" was sufficient enough for Ashcroft to be warned, what about the ordinary citizens who boarded the planes and were in the Towers and Pentagon?

Ashcroft Responds To 9/11 Foreknowledge ChargesFormer Attorney General confronted on radio show, claims reports he stopped flying commercial before September 11 2001 false, war on terror not a money making scheme for some

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft has been confronted on a nationally syndicated radio show about why he stopped flying commercial before 9/11 and other issues of government complicity in the attacks. Ashcroft's terse and evasive responses to the questions do not match the facts.

After accepting an invitation to briefly appear with Ashcroft on Chicago's Mancow program, radio host Alex Jones grilled the former Governor of Missouri on why he was warned to avoid using commercial airliners in the weeks before 9/11.

Former Attorney General confronted on radio show, claims reports he stopped flying commercial before September 11 2001 false, war on terror not a money making scheme for some

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 10 2006

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft has been confronted on a nationally syndicated radio show about why he stopped flying commercial before 9/11 and other issues of government complicity in the attacks. Ashcroft's terse and evasive responses to the questions do not match the facts.

After accepting an invitation to briefly appear with Ashcroft on Chicago's Mancow program, radio host Alex Jones grilled the former Governor of Missouri on why he was warned to avoid using commercial airliners in the weeks before 9/11.

"I did not cease flying on commercial aircraft," said Ashcroft dismissing a July 2001 CBS News report that quoted the FBI as saying Ashcroft was only traveling via a government chartered jet due to a "threat assessment."

If Ashcroft had been flying commercial before 9/11 as he claims then they FBI could have simply stated this - why would they lie and tell CBS News that Ashcroft was "acting under guidelines," that came strictly from his FBI security detail?

Bob Woodward's best-selling State of Denial dooms the official 9/11 narrative

by Justin Raimondo

Bob Woodward's revelation that Condoleezza Rice was warned by George Tenet and two other top CIA officials, on July 10, 2001, that a terrorist attack on the U.S. was imminent continues to reverberate – auguring potentially devastating consequences for the Bush White House. While Rice initially denied it, her spokesman confirmed that a meeting took place on that date, although Rice continues to plead a memory lapse. And as the news that Rice wasn't the only one privy to this briefing leaks out, a veritable epidemic of amnesia seems to be breaking out in Washington.

“Former Attorney General John Ashcroft this week became the only Cabinet-level Bush official to attack the Sept. 11 Commission, writing in his memoirs it "seemed obsessed with trying to lay the blame for the terrorist attacks at the feet of the Bush administration, while virtually absolving the previous administration of responsibility."

"Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a 'threat assessment' by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term."

It seems that you just can’t please some people.

The self-anointed Mr. Ashcroft apparently believes that the Commission didn’t bend over backwards far enough to exonerate the Dubya Administration.

A post at Daily Kos points out that former Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airplanes immediately after receiving the warning of an imminent attack from CIA director George Tenet.

"The White House is in full panic mode trying to find a way to spin the now-admitted fact that George Tenet did indeed brief Condi Rice on July 10, 2001 about the terror threat. The latest damage control approach has been to claim that the report was "nothing new".

So how come when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft heard the same warning a week later, he immediately stopped flying commercial aircraft?

***

July 17 -- Ashcroft briefed. July 28 -- Ashcroft flies in a charter, leased, according to the article, earlier that week.

Seems to me this could be another blockbuster. If Ashcroft decided that commercial flights were too dangerous based on the same warning as Rice (who presumably wasn't flying commercial flights either) ignored, we have ourselves some rather dramatic
evidence ...."

We previously reported that, in July 2001, CIA director Tenet briefed Condie Rice about impending attacks and the fact that the 9/11 Commission knew about it, yet didn't disclose it in its report.

Now, it turns out that Donald Rumsfeld and then Attorney General Ashcroft received the same briefing. McClatchy Newspapers broke the story:

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.